This is not snark or wishful thinking. Sure, taking the House is still a major reach that will require a perfect storm to accomplish. Sure, Senate Republicans are already plotting the same kind of unprecedented obstruction we saw with President Obama.
Sure, Trump and his minions are already trying to deligitimize and diminish her Presidency before she’s even won the election and been sworn in.
All of that is true, and we will be continuing the same old fights from the Obama administration going forward.
Despite all that, Hillary has a very real chance to have a major impact on the country that will last for decades within the first years of her Presidency.
A couple people are very important to making this a reality.
Antonin Scalia already did his part. President Obama and (probably) Senator Schumer are the two others who matter the most going forward.
The most important, though, are voters in states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, Missouri, Arizona, and Ohio. Only if enough of them vote for Democratic Senators to give us a majority, even a slim one, will any of this be possible.
A couple of (in my view likely) things need to happen going forward.
First things first, Hillary needs to be elected President and we need to elect a Democratic Senate. Here is where things get a little bit complicated:
Firstly, the new Senate will be sworn in 17 days before the new President. A new Senate has the power to set the rules for the upcoming term. Given the ludicrous obstruction of Merrick Garland’s nomination and the Republicans’ stated goal of obstructing Clinton’s nominees as well, I think it isn’t at all unlikely that we finally see filibuster reform- at least for judicial nominees.
If the Senate sets a rule that judicial nominees cannot be filibustered we suddenly have a lot of work to do.
The President and the President-Elect will have to work out the specific strategy, but they’re going to work together to fill the 99 vacancies in the federal court system, up to and including replacing Scalia on the SCOTUS. My guess is that Hillary will ask that President Obama fill up most, if not all, of the vacancies in the lower courts in the final two weeks of the Obama Presidency. Whether or not she asks the President to push through the Garland confirmation depends on how she wants to spend her first 100 days in office.
The American people are already pretty sold on the fact that the GOP obstruction of the Supreme nomination was wrong. It might be a little more politically dicey to change the rules and then pack nearly 100 judges onto the Court. That’s why its more likely that a popular outgoing President does it than a (relatively) unpopular incoming President who has to keep working with these people will.
As to whether the Supreme Court seat will be filled under President Obama or Hillary is a different set of political calculations. Filling the seat is Obama’s right, and having put three people on the Court would be a major factor in his legacy going forward. That said, giving Hillary the chance to have one of her first accomplishments in office be putting someone on the Court could give her a shot of momentum early on, as she’s not going to get any “honeymoon” period from Republicans in Congress.
Whoever they put in that ninth seat, that person will be an almost unimaginably vast improvement over Scalia. Here’s where things start to get interesting.
For the first time in a long time progressives will have a majority on the Supreme Court. Kennedy’s influence as a “swing” vote will be gone.
Anyone think we might have some lawsuits working their way through the courts related to the contentious election we just had? Voting rights? Campaign finance rules? Gerrymandering?
As these lawsuits make their way through the appeals process, we get closer and closer to major reforms that cannot be stopped by Republican obstructionism.
Filling the vacancies in the federal courts and flipping the majority on the Supreme Court will mean that Citizens United days are numbered. It means that the Voting Rights Act could be resuscitated. It means that vote suppression laws pushed by state Republicans after disastrous midterms can be weakened or rolled back. And it could lead to successful challenges against some of the worst gerrymandered legislative maps in states around the country.
Woah.
This is not even to mention issues that go beyond our elections, in terms of the rights we’re supposed to enjoy under the Constitution and challenges to those rights from Republican zealots in the states. Issues of birth control, gender identity, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, can all be impacted. We can revisit “right to work” laws, too.
Those are all vital and wonderful things to win. But there is particular importance to the election and campaign finance changes that we could see.
The 2018 and 2020 elections won’t just be about holding the Senate on a tough map and winning a second term for Hillary. After the 2020 elections, we’re going to have a census and state legislators and governors around the nation will be drawing new legislative maps that will last another decade.
If we want to stop the ridiculous assault on the American people happening in state governments, we need to hold some legislative chambers and governorships in 2020. If we don’t want to rely on a wave election to win or hold the House, we need to have a seat at these redistricting tables.
Stopping the Republican attack on our elections is the first step towards achieving any progressive goals in the years to come, and stopping the Republican rollbacks of all the progress we’ve made as a nation.
This much is true: most of what we can do through the Courts is clean up elephant shit, not make more progress. We’re going to need a better Senate than we’re likely to see even if we take the majority, and we’re going to need the House. We can weaken or roll back some of the Republican nonsense we’ve seen in the states, but making real progress will be hard. The Court can't create paid family leave, the Court can’t raise the minimum wage, the Court can’t do much to reform our immigration system.
But seriously. If the first term of the Clinton Presidency overturns Citizens United, restores the VRA, rolls back Republican voter suppression in blue and purple states they control, creates fairer legislative maps for the House and state legislatures, and leads to Democratic seats at the redistricting table after the 2020 Census then it will easily be one of the most important Presidencies we’ve seen in a long while.
If Republicans are committed to obstructionism then the only way that we make real progress is by having fewer Republicans or more moderate Republicans who are willing to compromise. The only way to get there (besides dealing with our midterm turnout problems) is to fix the fundamental problems with our election system as it exists today. And the only way to do that is to fill the federal courts and the Supreme Court. We can do that with 50 Democratic Senators and Tim Kaine.
Three weeks to go out and win this thing!
